“Digital church” (#DigitaleKirche) is currently much discussed. It’s inspiring (and sometimes amusing) to follow the debates about digital tools, social media, helpful apps, or the latest means of communication in all fields of ecclesiastical life. Thinking about “blessing robots,” “donation apps,” or “pastoring chat bots” is an important step to usher the church into the daily digital experience of their (potential) members. I think the church has to go that way for communicational and administrative reasons as long as digital technology supports pastoral tasks and doesn’t replace “offline” community. In this way, #DigitaleKirche is an esteem of the communicative fundamental structure of the church and, also, of the ways communication between people has changed. Continue reading “Digitizing the Church – Challenges for Academic Theology”

Whoever has studied history has surely heard about the great controversies on historiographical theories and schools with their linguistic and epistemological ideas. It seems to me that the 20th century was full of radical position fights and historians walking from “turn to turn.” But today, they shy away from a theory based “digital turn” or – even a step forward – a “paradigm shift” of methodological thinking and narratives. Therefore, I wonder: do historians really need a “theory of digital history?” Do they even want it? Is it necessary? Continue reading “Does Digital History Need a Theory?”

In the spring of 2016, two graduate students in theology sat together during a coffee break: One of them complained: “It is impossible to find the most suitable method to work with my digitized corpus.” The other nagged: “And I can’t find a theory which fits into my way of analysing sources statistically!” Continue reading “InFoDiTex: What We Do and What We Want”

About & Contact

This is a private blog written by Stefan Karcher and Christopher Nunn, initiators of InFoDiTex.

The Interdisciplinary Forum of Digital Text Sciences at the University of Heidelberg is an open meeting for (junior) researchers in all fields of Digital Humanities. It was founded by doctoral students who meet every month during the semester turn for an informal exchange about theories and methods of digital text analysis and their own projects. On our blog we will share some impulses of the discussions at InFoDiTex.

Please enter the debate with your comments or share your work as a guest author on our blog – or at InFoDiTex.